Biden Jokes about Roberts’s Memory

While swearing in senior White House staff today, Vice President Joe Biden made a crack about the not-so-smooth swearing in of President Barack Obama yesterday by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

“My memory is not as good as Justice Roberts — Chief Justice Roberts,” Biden quipped as he began to administer an oath of office to a group of senior White House staff at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which holds the ceremonial office of the vice president and is located just West of the White House.

Obama and Roberts stumbled over each other at the inaugural swearing in ceremony on the Capitol steps yesterday.

Instead of waiting for Roberts to finish the first line of the presidential oath–“I, ___, do solemnly swear”–Obama jumped in immediately after Roberts read his name.

Roberts then proceeded to jumble the phrasing of the oath’s next line, which officially reads, “that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States,” as set out in the Constitution.

Roberts’s version: “that I will execute the Office of President to the United States faithfully.”

After starting to respond, Obama stopped and waited for Roberts to correct himself, which Roberts did, sort of: “faithfully the office of president of the United States,” he said.

Obama then repeated the line close to the way Roberts had read it the first time. See a video of the swearing in here.

News media couldn’t seem to agree on whose fault the stumbles were: CNN’s Anderson Cooper remarked, on air soon after the ceremony, “I can’t believe Roberts” flubbed the oath. “I mean, it’s in the Constitutuion,” Cooper said. Fox News, meanwhile, reported online around the dame time that Roberts had guided a stumbling Obama through the swearing in, “helping him through a slight stumble in the first of what could be many important interactions between.”

Fox New later updated its story; Cooper posted one that included Obama’s stumbles as well.